


Love's First Kiss

by nothingelsematters



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Don't Like Don't Read, F/M, Underage - Freeform, gracie is three and a half years younger than max if you hadn't figured that out, wherein i continue writing mindless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-20 12:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1511081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingelsematters/pseuds/nothingelsematters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or,</p><p>Five Times Gracie Gold and Max Aaron Almost Kissed And The First Time They Did</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love's First Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> So I really can't stress enough that there is a serious age difference here. I hadn't even realised how big it was myself until I started taking it back in time.
> 
> Anyway, this is me writing mindless fluff when I should be writing other things, bother.

**1\. Gracie is 14, Max is 18. 2010 US National Championships.**

Gracie can’t help but feel important. After all, this year, she’s at the  _proper_  National championships, with the Juniors and Seniors.  _And_  she won a medal! Her pewter medal goes with her everywhere she does, and she always introduces herself as the Novice Pewter Medallist.

She sits with her family to watch the Junior Men, and wave to Jason, who is skating so well. He’s still tiny, him and that other boy that he’s always battling with. But then the bronze medallist comes out to collect his medal, and Gracie sits up a bit straighter, because this isn’t a tiny little boy like Jason and (Joshua? Gracie thinks so.), this is a  _man_. Not too tall, but he has actual muscles, and nice eyes, and a smile that makes something warm in Gracie’s chest.

At the banquet, she goes to find Jason, and finds herself instead in a giggling group of Novice and Junior girls, all in their mid-teens. They’re like birds of prey, looking over the young men, trying to work out which ones to try and corner.

Gracie finds herself looking around – and spots the young man from the Junior ceremony again. He’s wearing a shirt-and-tie, and looks a bit lost. Max, she remembers.

Before she realises, the giggles around her get louder.

“Oooh, Gracie, that’s a high prize to aim for!”

“Go on, dare you to kiss him!”

“Yeah, dare you!”

Gracie looks around the group, who are all egging her on, and then back at Max. Grinning, she walks away from her group and straight up to him.

“Oh,” he says, surprised. “Hello.”

“Hello,” Gracie smiles at him, her best smile. “I’m Gracie. The Novice pewter medallist.” But the achievement she’s been so proud of all week seems rather small and insignificant all of a sudden.

Then Max smiles, and his nice brown eyes crinkle at the corners. “Congratulations, Gracie. I’m sure you were wonderful.”

Gracie can’t help it. She glows.

He’s not much taller than her, she thinks. If she stands on her toes, they’d be at just the right height. She rises, and leans forward –

\- only to find herself with an awkward pat on the shoulder and Max side-stepping away from her kiss.

“Hey, you have fun tonight, all right?”

Gracie is surprised. No-one’s ever avoided a kiss like that in her experience.

“I want to have fun,” she says to him.

Max grins wryly. “And I don’t want to end up in jail, Gracie. Go enjoy yourself with your friends.” He leans down and kisses her cheek.

(It’s only later that Gracie finds out Max is already eighteen, and realises how much trouble he could have got in.)

 

**2\. Gracie is 15, Max is 19. 2011 Midwestern Sectionals.**

“Is this seat taken?”

Max regrets the words the second they leave his mouth when the girl looks up and realises who it is. It’s Gracie, that girl who’d tried to kiss him at the banquet last year, and he’d made such an awkward job of rejecting her. She really ought to hate him, Max thinks.

She’s got prettier, too, his brain adds unhelpfully.

“No,” she answers with a smile. “You can sit here, if you like.”

Max hasn’t grown a lot since last year, mostly putting on weight. But Gracie is taller, slimmer; she’s started dying her hair blonde, Max notices. Yes, Gracie is going to be very pretty in another year or so.

“I heard you won Southwest Regionals,” she says.

“Yeah,” Max answers, and can’t stop the smile. And this year, with Joshua and Jason gone up to Senior, he’s sure he can take the lot.

“So why are you here?”

“Tom’s got a student here,” Max shrugs. “He didn’t want me to lose training time, and I wanted to watch anyway.”

They sit quietly for a moment, watching the Seniors on the ice. Then Max says, “Are you at Nationals this year?”

And Gracie is so not expecting the sledgehammer of emotions that that question causes. She tries her hardest not to cry, not to be upset, there was always next year, but  _damn these hormones_! Her mother told her it was perfectly normal and okay to cry, but Gracie hates being at the mercy of her emotions.

“Oh,” and Max feels guilt clawing at his gut. He’d made her cry. Oh, he hadn’t wanted to do that. Oh no. If there’s one thing Max can’t stand, it’s seeing girls cry. Especially if he’s made them cry. “Oh no, I’m sorry, please don’t cry, it’s all right, there’s always next year.”

Gracie sniffles. “I know. I know.”

Max hugs her, because that’s what he always does with his sisters, and he really, really, really can’t stand seeing her cry.

They sit together for a little while until Gracie stops crying. At last she says, “I came sixth.”

“Oh,” Max doesn’t know what to say. What do you say? “I’m sorry.”

Gracie looks up at him, and Max notices her eyes are a really nice brown. Like his. Like his sisters’. He brushes a stray tear from her cheek – and his sisters would never look at him like that.

He quickly stands up and Gracie nearly topples over.

“I hope I see you next year,” he says, kissing the top of her head the way he would Maddie.

“Wait! Do you – I don’t know, want to get an ice-cream?” Gracie asks hopefully.

Max smiles gently at her.

“I have a girlfriend, Gracie. And you’re so young.”

Gracie lets her parents believe she was crying about the sixth place when they find her later.

(She finds out later that Max had only been with his girlfriend for a few weeks by then, and the relationship would end not very many weeks later when Max discovered her in bed with another man.)

 

**3\. Gracie is 16, Max is 20. 2012 US National Championships.**

Gracie sees Max sitting forlornly, by himself, out on the balcony. He’s all alone and looks so sad, and she doesn’t like it.

“Hello,” she says as she comes to sit next to him on the bench.

Max looks up in surprise. “Hello,” he says. Then a smile cracks his face. “Congratulations.”

Gracie beams. Junior Champion. She can hardly believe it. And now, she suddenly realises, she is almost his equal.

Then she realises she hadn’t seen Max at the podium ceremony.

“What about you?” she asks.

Max turns away. “Eighth.”

“Oh.”

They sit in silence, Gracie awkwardly trying to work out what to say next, when Max speaks again.

“I’m quitting.”

“ _What?_ ” She’s seen him skate. He can’t quit. He’s amazing!

“I’m going to quit,” Max says, more seriously. “There’s no point to continuing. The officials have made it quite clear they don’t like my skating. Look at this.” He holds out a piece of paper; Gracie realises it’s his feedback sheet, the ones the judges give to all the skaters. Max’s is written through on both sides; and as Gracie’s eyes sweep through it, she realises it’s all negatives, except for one or two small neutral comments about his speed and jumps.

_Poor edgework – bad crossovers – no elegance – no musicality – poor artistry – no interpretation – high knees – bad lines – poor spins –_

Her eyes go wide.

“What on earth do they want you to do?”

“They want me to be Jeremy,” Max laughs bitterly. “I’ll never be him. Ever. So why continue? I’ll never be what they want me to be. If I quit now, I could still get into a good college with a decent hockey team. I could earn a living like that. D1 hockey was where I was headed anyway.”

Gracie is stunned. Max is going to give up? She knows him only a bit, but that doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t seem like him. She looks at his slumped shoulders, and his hung head. Doubt assails her.

 _Maybe that’s easy for you to say,_  she thinks.  _You have accolades and people getting excited for you. But when all you get is endless criticism...that can’t be easy. Maybe he’s right._

She puts a hand on his back.

“Whatever you choose, I wish you all the luck in the world,” she says softly. It feels strange, thinking that maybe she isn’t going to see him around next year.

Max looks up at her with a smile, a smile that’s softer than what she’s used to, and it makes her catch her breath.

Their breathing slows, and Gracie realises that they’re breathing in the same rhythm; Max has never looked at her this way before...

“It’s all right for you, everyone loves you!”

“Josh, stop it. We’ll get to Junior Worlds and everything will be  _fine_ , you’ll see.”

“You’re right, you always are.”

When Gracie stops paying attention to Josh and Jason’s little spat, she realises that Max is gone. After a moment of feeling sorry for herself, she goes back inside.

(Max is watching from the path. He’s just realised how dangerous Gracie is for him.)

**4\. Gracie is 16, Max is 20. Pre-season monitoring in Colorado Springs.**

Gracie has never been more glad to see anyone than she has been to see Max, when she walks into the nutrition seminar. She detaches herself from Jason, who is being his usual clingy self, and races over to him.

“What happened to you quitting?” she asks flippantly, and Max smiles back at her.

“I decided that I wasn’t going to give in that easily,” he answers, and his eyes are bright with fire.

“I’m glad,” she says seriously. They sit down, and Jason reattaches himself. Gracie doesn’t notice Max glower slightly.

*

Max seems very relaxed, Gracie thinks. The whole monitoring week he seems very relaxed. Even when the officials glower over his Tron program and the too-literal costume, he doesn’t miss a beat, just shrugs. Somewhere, he’s found peace with his lot.

Gracie likes the Tron costume. It looks fun and quirky, and it’ll make Max stand out.

(Also, it’s tight-fitting in  _all_  the right places, and the first time she sees Max in it, she can’t help but blush.)

It only gets a little awkward when they start talking assignments; Gracie is very excited about her two Grands Prix, and Jason is happy enough to have his Junior Grands Prix, but Max is in that strange no-man’s land of Senior Bs.

They do find a delightful surprise, though – both Max and Gracie are assigned to the US International Classic in September. Gracie is happy she won’t have to wait til Nationals to see Max again, though for the life of her she can’t figure out why.

*

“Are you and Jason together?” Max asks abruptly.

Gracie blinks at him in surprise.

“What?”

“You and Jason. Are you a couple?”

Gracie giggles. “No, of course not. He’s like my brother. He wouldn’t be interested in me that way anyway – or haven’t you noticed the way he looks at Josh?”

Now it’s Max’s turn to blink. Come to think of it, that makes sense. He smiles.

“Why do you ask, anyway?” Gracie asks, curious. She moves closer to him. They’re all alone; it’s the last day of monitoring, and most of the other skaters are having last-minute meetings with officials.

“Oh, I just wondered. He always seems to be hanging off you.”

Gracie shrugs. “That’s Jason.” She smiles at Max – they’re more or less the same height now.

Max smiles back, and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Gracie’s heartbeat quickens.

A door bangs, and Max springs back. When Gracie looks back, he’s disappeared.

She sighs.

**5\. Gracie is 17, Max is 20. US International Classic, 2012.**

Max is certain that he can handle anything right now. Anything at all. His first Senior International and he has the gold hanging around his neck. He feels ten foot tall and bulletproof. Right at this moment, the world could throw anything at him and he could handle it –

\- oh.

Well, except maybe Gracie wearing a dress like that.

Max has just walked into the banquet when he sees Gracie. He’s high as a kite, walking tall, enjoying the glow that gold has given him. All those doubts and desires to quit seem long ago and foolish.

He knows Gracie won the silver, expects to see her at the banquet, but he’s not prepared for that dress. It fits in all the right places, showing off Gracie’s newly-acquired figure, and her long blonde hair is loose, hanging down her back.

In that moment, Max knows he’s a goner. She turns and smiles at him, and his knees go weak.

He tries to rationalise his way out of it. She’s so much younger than him. It wouldn’t be right. But she smiles again, and the thoughts melt. She’s seventeen now – of age, almost an adult herself. Old enough to decide for herself.

“Congratulations.”

They both say it at the same time, and end up giggling. For both of them, it is a triumph; for both, their first international Senior success.

They talk for a long time, reliving their favourite moments. Max tries to describe to Gracie the feeling of landing the quad-triple. She listens in abject fascination, trying to imagine adding an extra rotation.

The party begins to slow, and die off; the official part of the banquet is over, and skaters are departing to the less-official parties (usually one of the Russians’ rooms – they always, always have vodka).

Gracie and Max find themselves alone. Their conversation trails off to nothing. Gracie feels her heartbeat accelerate again. This time, she is sure, she’s got it right. Max isn’t hiding the way he looks at her any more.

She finds herself moving closer, and then she feels a hand touching hers; she glances down and sees Max’s hand clasping hers, his fingers tangling with hers. He has nice hands, soft and gentle, not too big, not too small.

She looks up again, and Max is there, so close to her, and she inhales; she can smell him, a whiff of aftershave and something else. Her eyes flicker to his lips, slightly parted; her heart races.

“Ah, there you are Max. What are you doing still out of bed? The season’s only just begun, you know.”

Max pulls away and heads out of the room at Tom’s gesture, glancing back over his shoulder as he goes. Tom glares at Gracie for a moment, before closing the door behind them.

(There are moments when Max doesn’t like Tom. This is one of them. He’s an adult, he should be allowed to have fun at competitions. But Tom doesn’t agree.)

**6\. Gracie is 17, Max is 20. 2013 US National Championships.**

If Max felt giddy at being the US International Classic champion, it’s nothing compared to how he feels now.

US National Champion.

He walks into the banquet, and it isn’t like last year. Last year nobody noticed him. This year, when he walks into the banquet, everyone turns and applauds.

But for Max, the competition isn’t over yet. He hasn’t yet won the prize he most wants.

He doesn’t see Gracie until much later, standing in a corner with Ashley, giggling. He’s determined. Tonight’s the night. Tonight, for everything.

*

Everyone’s dancing and having a good time, Gracie thinks. Everyone but her. She saw Max when he came in, looking bold and handsome in his checked shirt (okay, the shirt was a disaster, but it was a disaster Gracie could live with). But ever since, circumstances had conspired to keep them apart.

(She was starting to suspect that those circumstances weren’t accidental.)

And then suddenly she’s given an almighty shove in her back – and her momentum carries her straight into Max.

“Oh! Hello, you,” Max says, grinning, his eyes twinkling.

“Hello, you,” Gracie answers, grinning at him. “Champion, huh?”

Max’s face flushes beautifully with pride; his dark eyes glowing.

“Well,” Gracie adds, “is it allowed, to dance with the champion?”

“It sure is,” Max replies, and they start to dance; but within a couple of minutes the beat changes, slows, and the song shifts to a slow romantic dance. Couples begin to melt into each other all over the floor; some old, some new, some who’ll be on their way in the morning with a smile and an awkward goodbye.

But Gracie has eyes only for Max; and the only thing she feels are his hands on her waist.

Their dancing slows; soon they’re not moving at all, just standing in the middle of the floor. Max traces a finger down Gracie’s cheek, and her heart thumps; is this finally the moment?

“Max? A word?”

Max sighs and pulls away from Gracie, turning to talk to Tom. Gracie watches unhappily; Max and Tom seem to be having some kind of argument.

Sighing, she chalks this one down to yet another near miss, and decides to go back to her room.

*

The soft tap on the door surprises her, but she figures it’s just her mother, or her coach, come to say goodnight.

“Come in.”

The door opens, and Gracie comes out of the bathroom, ready for bed; her jaw drops.

Max is standing in the doorway.

“May I?”

She nods wordlessly. Max closes the door, and suddenly Gracie is very aware of her nightie. She reaches for the bathrobe and ties it quickly around herself.

“I told Tom to shove it,” Max says suddenly, and the heat in his tone surprises Gracie.

“What do you mean?”

“He says I should stay away from you. Nothing but trouble, according to him. And apparently I shouldn’t be thinking about relationships in the middle of the season.”

Gracie feels herself flushing all over.

“So I told him he’s full of it. It’s my night, it’s your night. We’ve avoided this for a long time, my Grace-girl. I don’t intend to avoid it any longer.”

Somewhere inside him, Max plucks up the courage that he’d felt at centre ice, and before he can chicken out, crosses to Gracie, pulling her into a kiss.

Gracie is sure she’s melting. Max’s mouth is warm and soft and passionate and fits so perfectly against hers. She runs her fingers through his hair and pulls him closer, feeling her body yearning for him. This is what she’s wanted for so long.

Max is falling into bliss. Gracie’s lips are pliant and sensual under his; her soft body pressed against him, her curves fitting against his. He feels the gentle strength under his hands and grips; this is everything he’s ever wanted, and it feels so right.

They have to break apart, eventually, for lack of air; but Max is reassured to see that Gracie is smiling at him, and he can’t help but smile back.

“It’s not going to be easy,” he warns.

Gracie just laughs. “Since when have either of us taken the easy road?” she says jestingly. Then her face turns fractionally more serious. “At least we finally got to the point of a kiss!”

Max grins, and Gracie shivers slightly, because his grin is wicked.

“I intend to do it again.”

“What a coincidence! So do I.”

Their laughter is lost in a kiss.

 


End file.
